Carve, from Haunted: A Collection of Weird Fiction
content warning: blood
Hey everyone.
I wanted to treat you all to a sample from Haunted: A Collection of Weird Fiction. This is my new collection of weird fiction adapted from the game Haunted: A Slip Story. It features six brand new stories about building props and decorating for Halloween. While they share the same inspiration as the stories featured in the game, these stories are their own standalone collection with interconnected plot elements, new characters, and new styles.
The collection is available at my Ko-fi, as part of a bundle with the game at itch.io, and at all the major eBook retailers: Smashwords, Apple, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo.
Today I’m sharing “Carve.” Enjoy.
CARVE
Taylor always hated the feeling of pumpkin guts. They just felt wrong. Everything did. The insides were so cold but guts should be warm. It was wrong.
But what kind of haunter would Taylor be if she didn't carve pumpkins on Halloween? It came with the territory. Besides, she was good at it. Her carving won competitions. It got press. People knew what she could do and wanted more.
Those classic orange pumpkins looked so good at the farm stand that she bought out the whole stock. 13. If the people wanted jack-o-lanterns, she was going to give them jack-o-lanterns. They would be clean, precise, and just slightly wrong. Taylor liked her haunt to look a little wrong. That was easy enough with carved pumpkins.
She kept brown craft paper on a roll in her workshop. It taped down easy and caught the mess. Newspaper was more traditional, but not being traditional never stopped her before.
Taylor had everything on hand to make these jack-o-lanterns last: knives, spoons, carving tools, plastic, petroleum jelly, and a massive ice chest. Carving cold pumpkins was harder work, but it created cleaner edges and preserved the whole structure. She just needed more patience and force to do it.
The sharp butcher's knife made quick work of the lid. Taylor prided herself on her perfect keyholes. There was no sense carving a complicated design only for the lid to never seal properly. Light leaks were the enemy. So was live flame. LED candles were cooler and brighter than flames. Why risk a bigger fire for such a wimpy effect?
Taylor wanted a classic haunted house this year. These pumpkins needed broken smiles and mismatched eyes. Do it right with so many in one haunt and it would look like they followed you everywhere.
She had stalled enough. The guts had to go.
The mess was inevitable. There has no containing the frigid innards. The guts went where they wanted, how they wanted to, and on their own time. Taylor knew she couldn't force one pumpkin to behave, let alone 13. No amount of planning could predict the final outcome.
Taylor grabbed the serrated spoon and started scraping. It even sounded wrong. This ugly fruit fought to stay in one piece, but it sounded like you were digging through damp sand. Sand that cold would be a blessing since it would fall apart. Pumpkins clung on for dear life. The stringy tendrils never ended.
The first pumpkin was almost clean. Taylor preferred to scrape it all to the bottom and then empty it out. It minimized contact with the guts. She even flipped it upside down to avoid most of the mess.
All Taylor saw was the red. It looked like this pumpkin fought back against her knife and won. Taylor couldn't ever see the cut through the guts. Her hands were numb from the cold.
She ran to the sink to wash them out. The hot water brought new life to her hands. Taylor couldn’t believe so much blood came from such a tiny cut. Stranger things had happened, sure, but massive blood loss from cleaning a pumpkin was a new one.
Taylor bandaged her finger and returned to the workshop. The blood was gone. The guts still looked like a crime scene, but they glistened in shades of orange and yellow. There was no red to be found, no evidence that the first pumpkin fought back.
Maybe she should just switch to foam pumpkins in the future. You didn’t need to salt cure a foam pumpkin with open wounds on your hands.
